The ego mind is never satisfied with what is. It always wants more, more, and more. It is like an empty hole that can never be filled. It is a hard-wired characteristic to never be satisfied with what it has and to seek something else.

On one level, this is a beneficial quality because it has spurred inventions and innovations. We aren’t satisfied with the dirt road and its muddy ruts when it rains. So we build a smooth paved road. Now we can travel longer and father, go more places, transport more goods, and build more traffic jams.

This is the way we are driven by our sense that what we have is not enough. Otherwise we would all sit in perfect bliss and allow ourselves to starve to death if food wasn’t immediately available. I mean it all ends in death anyway, so why struggle and strive? But on another level this drive for more is the cause of endless restlessness, feverish activity, crowds, noise, pollution, personal and corporate greed, and despoiling the planet.

Like so many things in life, in moderation the desire for more and more is beneficial. It brings with it new ideas and more creative ways of accomplishing goals. But when out of balance, the endless desire for more brings dissatisfaction and frustration.

Gratitude means happiness in the present moment with what we have. We look at our shirt and thank it for covering us and giving us shelter, no matter if the shirt is old, worn, stained, or whatever other judgment we can place on it. We even appreciate the stains because they remind us of the good times we had when getting them.
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We don’t look at others’ shirts and start comparing, wishing we had theirs. We are happy for others that they have a gorgeous silk shirt and we have a plain cotton one. Or maybe we even have a cheap polyester one. We can still be grateful for all the hands that went into getting that shirt to us. We can silently thank the person in the sweatshop in China who is slaving to make money to feed her family, the truck driver who endured traffic in the rain, heat, and other hardships to deliver it. The shop owner who selected it and put it on display and all the hands that touched it in between.

Gratitude takes us on an endless journey of wonderment. It is not dull. We are not looking to the future to feel OK. We feel good right now because we are thankful to be alive. With gratitude we can be happy with plain bread or a simple apple. We can be thankful for all the miracles that went into making that bread, the wonderment of how a juicy apple can come from a small seed. This kind of gratitude for simple things that are perfect just as they are is key to a happy life. Otherwise we are always looking for the next best thing, the thing that is better than what we have.

Mindfulness is committing to the present moment instead of letting our minds wander and drift into past recollections and future imaginings—all the while judging and commenting. This idea of how to conduct our lives cleanly and clearly, without stressful meanderings is not new. The Buddha came up with it roughly 2500 years ago. So I wouldn’t exactly call it a movement.

It is such a simple idea, I’m sure others thought of it before Buddha but he is the one who articulated it. Mindfulness means the ability to keep something in mind. This means the skill to keep one thing in mind instead of being taken off course. It takes three forms:

• Stay alert to what you’re doing in the present moment.
  
  
• Recognize the skillful and unskillful qualities that arise in the mind.
  
  
• Know how to get rid of the qualities that get in the way of concentration, then developing the skillful ones that promote it.
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I don’t think anyone can find a flaw in mindfulness. Maybe someone could say that if our minds don’t drift, we wouldn’t have imagination and therefore we couldn’t come up with creative solutions. But even in problem solving, being mindful is more effective than being scattered and all over the map. Furthermore, mindfulness brings peace and clarity, which brings happiness and cleans away distress.

It is difficult for the ego-mind to be happy with the present. This is because the mind starts churning and jumping around the minute we awaken. This mind does not have the capacity to experience the present moment. It can only jump ahead into the future: What has to be done, who we’ve got to meet, what we are going to eat, what will become of us, and all manner of activities with an undertone of constant fear.

The ego mind also jumps to the past: I should have said this, I should have done that, they did this to me, if this hadn’t happened then that wouldn’t have happened—also with an underlying current of fear.

The only way to be happy with the present is to live in our Souls. That is the territory that is ours that only knows the present moment and only knows peace. But if the ego mind is constantly setting up a noise screen and we just tag along with it, we won’t discover our Souls. We will just be puppets of the crazy mind that will never let us be at rest.

We can still perform activities. It’s not that we have to sit in the lotus position and meditate for the rest of our lives. The activity comes from the Soul level. Not from the ego mind.

Exercise is a good example. So many people go to the gym and work out hating it. But they think it will make them look good for some future event or so other people will admire them. Or it’s the “right” thing to do. Or they hate their bodies and want to mold them into some ideal they were not born to attain. They are not there to feel how good it is to move the body and let the muscles play right now in the present moment—not for some future event or to correct past overindulgences.
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Everything done from the ego mind level is never present and is never, never, never happy. Happiness can only reside in the present moment. And that is the only moment we have anyway!

We don’t need to be at war with our lesser selves. We need to transcend them. If we try to defeat the tendencies we don’t like in ourselves and that don’t bring us inner peace, we set up an adversarial situation. We are then actually going against ourselves, blaming and criticizing.

As in war, there is defeat, if we become angry with ourselves. And no one ever wins in a war really. Everyone is scarred by it in some way.

So we do not want to defeat ourselves. We want to examine the traits that do not support us and then lovingly set about to rise above them gently to our Soul level. For example, we recognize a tendency to cut corners and be lazy. We know this is not a great character trait and does not lead to success in any undertaking. We also know that at the end of the day we will beat up on ourselves for being slackers.

Adding self-criticism to our already low sense of self-esteem leads to a downward spiral. It more effective to look within and see the fear behind the procrastination. We need to look at what about the task at hand makes us want to escape the present moment, and we need to arrive at what we can do to get out of our inertia in a fun and lighthearted way.
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In this way, our lesser selves (our petty, frightened ego-minds) will become neutralized. We have not given them the power and therefore do not need to fight them. We just leave them where they are and move to a higher level.

Pain and suffering are never the path to happiness. The only path to happiness is happiness is happiness itself. No amount of struggle and suffering will ever bring us happiness. This is because struggling and suffering also bring with them lack of gratitude and the inability to see the good in life.

It is a myth that one day, if we struggle and suffer enough, the Big Guy in the Sky will reward us for being so good and and miserable. On the contrary, struggling and suffering attract only more struggling and suffering. We can’t postpone our happiness by thinking that one day, if we slave away hard enough, we will get a big pat on the head and everything will end up like a wonderful fairy tale.

I am not saying that there isn’t pain in life. Being in the Physical guarantees pain of some sort of pain (as a warning system) at ever stage of life. But suffering and struggling are mental attitudes divorced from the actual sensation of pain. Struggling and suffering are all about “Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Life sucks!”
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The pursuit of happiness is itself a dead end. Happiness is always in the present moment. If we are pursuing it, it means we are not in it. It is in the future. It is not now. This doesn’t work and we will end up like hamsters on a wheel, frantically and endlessly running after something that does not exist—because it is not in the present moment.

Universal wisdom is the understanding that everything is put together perfectly, just as it is. It doesn’t need human intervention to make it better. This kind of wisdom is far-reaching and often beyond the grasp of the human mind. We can admire it and derive great inner peace when we channel it, but our minds can never encompass the magnitude of universal wisdom.

We are fortunate to have minds that can conceive of this state of perfection. Enlightened minds can sense the vast interconnectedness of it all. Every object no matter how tiny or how huge impacts every other object in an infinite universe. This is difficult for many to grasp and most people just give up. They say, “Let the priests, rabbis, mullahs, and philosophers figure it out.”
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Yet we all have the capacity to channel universal wisdom. It takes contemplation and the willingness to sit still and explore the implications of an Infinite Universe. Infinite means never ending, never beginning, always here in the present moment, always has been, always will be—in all its changing shapes and forms. It is huge beyond comprehension but can be felt in our inner, deeper selves, our souls.

The Buddhist concept of emptiness means we are not adding anything of our own psychological personality to what we are observing. It doesn’t mean we are vacant zombies that sit in numb trance-like states trying to overcome the upsets of life. It doesn’t mean we are brainless blocks of wood.

We are active observers and participants in our myriad experiences. But we do not add mental clutter and garbage to the scene, whether we are meditating, taking a walk, or doing a job. This clutter takes the form of annoying ego-based musings, regrets, and anxiety about the future. Even sitting on a beach watching the waves can turn into a harrowing experience if we bring all our drama into it.

“Look at those waves. They remind me of the day when my father and I used to play at the beach. Now he is gone and I miss him so much. All the people I love are leaving me. No one really loved me the way he did and now I’m all alone! Poor me, I guess I will always be alone. I hate all this sun, sand, and water!”
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With an empty mind, we sit at the beach, feel the unity of sun, sea, sand and beauty. We let it stir our hearts without an inner discussion of judgment, regret, hope, and evaluation. It is just the beach. It is not the stage and backdrop for our unfortunate mind-stream of constant inner chatter. It is peaceful and and natural.

It has always intrigued me that when I am asleep I don’t feel any pain. Even if I have a throbbing toothache, that pain magically disappears when I am unconscious. Then, when I wake up, the pain starts its nagging process and draws all my attention to it.

The mind kicks in and starts churning. Fear steps in and adds to the pain and suffering. How long will this last? Why is this happening to me? I shouldn’t have done such and such. Then I look for more causes: I look at my ancestry, where I can place the blame. Then I look to the future: How much is this going to cost me? How much time do I need to take off to fix this?

The pain is just an innocent sensation alerting me that something is wrong with my tooth. That is all. Whatever I add to this sensation is suffering. I can personalize it and make it seem that no one else has ever had to go through this misery. Or that the Universe has singled me out to torture. I can take it to a state of extreme anxiety: Fear that it will never end and I will be condemned to a life of agony.
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This is how the process of suffering escalates. Then, when we go to sleep, again, the pain vanishes and all the mental activity, which is the suffering aspect, disappears as well.

Most people are prisoners of their own ego-minds. Since the ego-mind is constantly running while we are awake, it is difficult to get away from it. The problem is that this mind, in its efforts to protect us and keep us at the top of the food chain, is fearful and negative most of the time. It it there to ensure our survival. Our freedom and happiness is not its first concern.

It can experience moments of enjoyment and peace, but because of its automatic nature, it quickly returns to a state of non-stop rambling. It goes back to the past, then jumps to the future. That is why it is called The Monkey Mind. It is constantly chattering. This inner noise is the ego mind. I am not referring to the practical mind that enables us to accomplish tasks and survive.

Until we recognize the nature of this ego-mind, we will not be able to free ourselves from it. As I said, it is automatic. It starts when we wake up. If we let it take over, we will definitely be in a prison of worry and fear because it is incapable of experiencing the peace of the present moment. So we do things to make it back down, most of which are distractions and entertainments. We ingest intoxicants, mood altering substances, or do anything that keeps this beast at bay.
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Interestingly, when we escape from a real prison we are free from the iron bars. But when we try to escape from the ego-mind, it does not lead to freedom. It is necessary to face it and understand how it works, or it only takes over more. It is only when we look at the way this mind behaves that we can let it carry on in the background and not be dragged around by it. Once we face it and see how it operates, it diminishes its hold on us and are free to feel the joy of our Souls.